Compare 25+ free LLM API providers — Groq, Cerebras, OpenRouter, Gemini, Mistral, OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA NIM, and more. Exact rate limits and token quotas. Verified July to September 2026.

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Best Free LLM APIs for Developers

Free LLM API access has never been better. Groq delivers Llama 3.3 70B at ~30 RPM on custom LPU hardware — the fastest free inference available. Cerebras offers 1M tokens/day free. Mistral gives access to all models including Large and Codestral at 1B tokens/month. OpenRouter aggregates ~30 free models through one OpenAI-compatible API. And GitHub Models provides 100+ models with generous daily limits.

This page compares 22 free LLM API providers — from proprietary model APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini) to open-model inference platforms (Groq, Cerebras, NVIDIA NIM) and AI gateways (OpenRouter, Portkey). The rate limit comparison table below has the data developers actually need when choosing a provider.

Recent LLM API Pricing Changes

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Proprietary Model APIs

First-party APIs from the companies that train frontier models. Higher quality ceilings but typically lower free tier limits — these are the APIs behind GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.

Google Gemini API Free (Reduced) caution discovered 2026-09-03 restructured

Free tier covers Gemini 2.5 Pro plus the Flash-tier models: Gemini 2.5 Flash (10 RPM), Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite (15 RPM), Gemini 3.0 Flash Preview, Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Preview, Gemini Embedding, and Gemma 4. 3.1 Pro Preview is paid-only. Per-model paid pricing: Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview $2/$12 per MTok (≤200K ctx, doubles above), Gemini 3.0 Flash Preview $0.50/$3, Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Preview $0.25/$1.50, Gemini 2.5 Pro $1.25/$10 (≤200K, doubles above), Gemini 2.5 Flash $0.30/$2.50. Gemini 2.0 Flash and 2.0 Flash-Lite deprecated June 1, 2026 — migrate to 2.5 Flash or 3.x Flash. All models support Batch/Flex at 50% discount. Mandatory spend caps enforced since April 1, 2026.

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Mistral AI Free caution discovered 2026-09-03 restructured

Free plan includes $10/mo in API credits and access to Mistral models in Studio, alongside limited messages, web searches and coding sessions. Paid API rates start at $0.5/M input and $1.5/M output tokens for Mistral Large; batch processing halves the price and cached input tokens cost up to 90% less.

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Cohere Trial Key stable

AI model API. Trial key: 1,000 API calls/month across all endpoints (Chat, Embed, Rerank). Access to Command R+, Rerank 3.5, Embed 4. Non-commercial use only

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OpenAI Free stable

AI API platform. One model is priced Free in OpenAI's own table — the moderation model omni-moderation-latest. Everything else is per-token: embeddings from $0.02/1M, chat-latest $5.00/1M input and $30.00/1M output. Three further free amounts are sub-quotas inside paid tools: 1 GB per day of File search storage, 1 GB per account per month of ChatKit upload storage, and web-search content tokens on non-reasoning models. No free token allowance for the flagship models; trial credits for new accounts were discontinued in mid-2025.

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xAI Free Credits

Sign-up gives $25 in free API credits. Additional $150/month via data sharing program (opt-in, requires $5 minimum spend first). Access to Grok models including Grok 4.1 series. Starting at $0.20/M input tokens, $0.50/M output tokens for Grok 4.1 Fast.

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Anthropic API Pay-as-you-go

Claude API access with usage-based pricing. Fable 5.1: $10/$50 per MTok (input/output). Opus 5: $5/$25 per MTok. Sonnet 5: $2/$10 per MTok. Haiku 4.5: $1/$5 per MTok. Batch API at 50% discount. Free tier: limited access via console with rate limits.

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Open-Model Inference Platforms

Platforms that host open-weight models (Llama, Mistral, Qwen, Gemma) on optimized hardware. Often the most generous free tiers — you get fast inference on powerful models without paying or sharing data for training.

Hugging Face Free stable

ML model hub — $0.10/month free inference credits, 200+ models via Inference Providers, unlimited model hosting on Hub

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Groq Free stable

Ultra-fast LLM inference on LPU hardware — free tier: 30 RPM, 100K-500K tokens/day depending on model. Supports Llama 4 Scout 17B, Llama 3.3 70B, Qwen3 32B, Whisper, and more. No credit card required

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OpenRouter Free caution discovered 2026-09-07 reduced

Superseded: As of 2026-09-07, openrouter.ai/pricing reads: Free tier includes 25+ free models, 4 free providers, 50 reqs/day rate limit, $25,000 of list price inference / month with no fees, 5% fee after that. We are not publishing our stored OpenRouter terms beside it — our own pricing change record, discovered 2026-09-07, names them as the previous ones. Read what we recorded ↓

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Cloudflare Workers AI Free caution discovered 2026-09-01 restructured

Superseded: As of 2026-09-01, developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing reads: Workers AI has a free tier with 10,000 Neurons per day. Usage above this is $0.011 / 1,000 Neurons. Some models require a paid plan or AI Gateway credits. We are not publishing our stored Cloudflare Workers AI terms beside it — our own pricing change record, discovered 2026-09-01, names them as the previous ones. Read what we recorded ↓

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Cerebras Free stable

Ultra-fast LLM inference API. Free tier: 1M tokens/day, 10-30 requests/min (varies by model). Models include Llama 3.1 8B, Qwen 3 235B, GPT-OSS 120B. Multi-thousand tokens/sec inference speed

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Replicate Free stable

ML model hosting and inference platform — free runs on curated model collection without billing. Pay-per-second billing by hardware type (CPU/GPU) after free allowance. No credit card required to start

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GitHub Models Retired

GitHub retired GitHub Models on 2026-07-30, so there is no free tier. GitHub's own documentation states "GitHub Models has been retired." The former offer was free access to 100+ models via GitHub Marketplace at 10-15 RPM and 50-150 requests/day.

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NVIDIA NIM Free

Free serverless APIs for LLM inference — access Llama 3.1, Mistral, and NVIDIA models. Free tier: ~40 RPM, 1,000 free API credits. No credit card required for development

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Ollama Cloud Free stable

Cloud-hosted Ollama for running open-source LLMs — free tier for light usage with 1 concurrent model. Access Llama, Mistral, Gemma, and other open models via API

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AI Gateways & Specialized Inference

Model routers, observability gateways, and specialized inference platforms. These add routing, monitoring, or domain-specific capabilities on top of LLM APIs.

Baseten Basic (Free Credits) stable

ML model deployment platform — $30 in free credits for new accounts. Basic plan is $0/month with pay-as-you-go billing after credits. Per-minute GPU/CPU billing for custom deployments, per-token for Model APIs

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Clarifai Community (Free)

Full-stack AI platform (computer vision, NLP, audio) — Community tier: 1,000 API calls/month. Access to pre-trained models for image recognition, NLP, and audio. No credit card required

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Keywords AI Free stable

Rebranded to Respan; keywordsai.co redirects to respan.ai. Free plan: full platform, 100k logs, 1k scores, 5 datasets, 2 evaluators, 5 prompts. No credit card required.

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Lumenfall.ai Free stable

AI media gateway providing unified access to leading image generation models via an OpenAI-compatible API. The platform itself is free to use with zero markup and no subscription fee. Inference costs for most models are billed at provider price, but FLUX.1 [schnell] FP8 is offered free forever with unlimited usage for registered users. Built-in failover and provider resilience included.

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Mediaworkbench.ai Free caution discovered 2026-09-01 restructured

Social media scheduling, publishing and analytics. Free plan at $0/month. The pricing page states no per-plan entitlements: the feature list shown is identical for all four plans.

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Pollinations.AI Free

easy-to-use, free image generation AI with free API available. No signups or API keys required, and several option for integrating into a website or workflow. [#opensource](https://github.com/pollinations/pollinations)

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Portkey Free stable

Control panel for Gen AI apps featuring an observability suite & an AI gateway. Send & log up to 10,000 requests for free every month.

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Free LLM API Rate Limit Comparison

The data developers actually need — exact rate limits, token quotas, and model availability for every free LLM API tier.

Provider Type Rate Limit Token/Volume Quota Top Models Best For
Groq Inference ~30 RPM Generous daily Llama 3.3 70B, Whisper Fastest free inference (LPU)
Cerebras Inference 10–30 RPM 1M tokens/day Llama 3.1 8B, Qwen 3 235B Highest free daily token quota
Mistral AI Provider 2 RPM 1B tokens/month Large, Codestral, Pixtral All models free, huge monthly quota
OpenRouter Gateway ~20 RPM/model ~30 free models DeepSeek R1, Llama 3.3, Qwen3 Multi-model router, one API key
GitHub Models Inference 10–15 RPM 50–150 req/day 100+ models, GPT-4o, Llama Widest model selection free
Google Gemini API Provider 10–15 RPM Reduced (late 2025) Flash, Flash-Lite, 1M context Longest context window (1M tokens)
NVIDIA NIM Inference ~40 RPM 1,000 free credits Llama 3.1, Mistral, NVIDIA Enterprise-grade inference
Cloudflare Workers AI Inference — 10K neurons/day Text gen, translation, STT Edge inference, no cold starts
OpenAI Provider 3 RPM (free) GPT-3.5 only (free) GPT-4o (paid), GPT-3.5 (free) Industry standard, widest ecosystem
Anthropic API Provider Pay-as-you-go No free tier Claude Fable 5.1, Opus 5, Sonnet 5 Best for complex reasoning tasks
Hugging Face Platform Varies $0.10/mo credits 200+ models via providers Model hub, community, hosting
xAI Provider Pay-as-you-go $25 free credits Grok 4.1 series Generous signup credits

Groq and Cerebras lead on free inference — Groq for speed (custom LPU silicon), Cerebras for daily token volume (1M/day). Mistral offers the broadest model access on free tier (all models, 1B tokens/month at 2 RPM). OpenRouter is ideal if you want one API key for ~30 free models. GitHub Models has the widest selection (100+ models). For proprietary frontier models, most providers are pay-as-you-go with signup credits rather than ongoing free tiers. Verified July to September 2026.

Which Free LLM API Should I Use?

Need the fastest free LLM inference?
Groq — custom LPU hardware delivers the fastest token generation, ~30 RPM free with Llama 3.3 70B. No credit card required.
Need maximum free token volume?
Cerebras — 1M tokens/day free, ideal for batch processing. Mistral AI — 1B tokens/month free across all models including Large and Codestral.
Want one API key for many models?
OpenRouter — ~30 free models (DeepSeek R1, Llama 3.3, Qwen3, Gemma 3) through one OpenAI-compatible API, ~20 RPM per model. GitHub Models for 100+ models with daily limits.
Need a long context window?
Google Gemini API — 1M token context window on Flash models. Free tier at 10–15 RPM (reduced from 2025 levels).
Building AI agents and need routing/observability?
Portkey — AI gateway with load balancing, fallbacks, and caching across providers. Keywords AI for LLM monitoring and optimization.
Want to run models at the edge?
Cloudflare Workers AI — 10,000 neurons/day free, runs at the edge with no cold starts. Supports text generation, translation, and speech-to-text.
Need enterprise-grade inference?
NVIDIA NIM — 1,000 free API credits, optimized inference for Llama, Mistral, and NVIDIA models. Baseten for $30 in deployment credits.
Want completely free, self-hosted inference?
Ollama Cloud — 1 concurrent model free. Or run Hugging Face models locally with their inference API ($0.10/month free credits, 200+ models).

Looking for more? Browse all AI / ML tools or see our broader AI & ML tools comparison covering 67+ tools including AI coding, observability, and specialized services. See also: Gemini API Pricing Overhaul Guide — before/after limits, cost analysis, 11 alternatives, and migration recommendations. Or our spend caps deep-dive.

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